Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#31

Post by richardjordan » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:24 PM UTC

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

I know how you feel. We have something like this in an upcoming product we're launching.

But that's fine. It's okay for people to compete with you. However if you want to chat with someone else working on similar stuff pre-launch, always love to talk to people working on stuff we're working on - tends to make us all better.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#32

Post by richardjordan » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:25 PM UTC

prezjordan wrote: post #28

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

Disrupt it :) Now you know what features they've got (and more importantly, what features they don't). I personally don't feel 100% comfortable linking with facebook - so a little pre-scan pep talk would be great. Plenty of other metrics to check out, too. Don't give up.

Totally agree with this. Competition is good - plus you have the advantage of seeing what they worked on. Remember, first mover advantage might be good in some cases - but in a lot of cases the only thing Pioneers get is arrows in the back.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#33

Post by mutual_likes » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:30 PM UTC

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

Sorry, but don't despair! Facebook did the same to a project/idea I started because they didn't. I thought about giving up, but they didn't implement it exactly as my site. I should be glad they made it because it was something I wanted and they could make it faster. If Wolfram Alpha didn't implement what I wanted with this, I hope yours does.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#34

Post by ninetax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:31 PM UTC

taliesinb wrote: post #29

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

Yup, it sucks. That happened to me with Light Table, though I had only been developing very rough prototypes rather than any kind of polished demo. On the positive side, there is a sense in which it is still overall a good thing. You might have had your thunder stolen, but at least more people are now looking up at the sky, and you've had the opportunity to think deeply about where the winds are blowing.

Thanks, I definitely feel that way too, plus they totally missed some things here which are pretty important to me like privacy, more friend analysis, openness as a platform and predictive models.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#35

Post by ninetax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:33 PM UTC

prezjordan wrote: post #28

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

Disrupt it :) Now you know what features they've got (and more importantly, what features they don't). I personally don't feel 100% comfortable linking with facebook - so a little pre-scan pep talk would be great. Plenty of other metrics to check out, too. Don't give up.

I agree. As exciting as this looks, I really don't want to give away every permission to WA. Who knowns what there going to do with it. I would like this kind of analysis to be local, thanks for the support!

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#36

Post by ninetax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:34 PM UTC

richardjordan wrote: post #31

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

I know how you feel. We have something like this in an upcoming product we're launching. But that's fine. It's okay for people to compete with you. However if you want to chat with someone else working on similar stuff pre-launch, always love to talk to people working on stuff we're working on - tends to make us all better.

Yeah, even though they are your "competition" they have to most in common with you in terms of interests.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#37

Post by ninetax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:35 PM UTC

mutual_likes wrote: post #33

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

Sorry, but don't despair! Facebook did the same to a project/idea I started because they didn't. I thought about giving up, but they didn't implement it exactly as my site. I should be glad they made it because it was something I wanted and they could make it faster. If Wolfram Alpha didn't implement what I wanted with this, I hope yours does.

Thanks! There are definitely some features missing here that I would love to see. I'll keep working on it!

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#38

Post by ninetax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:36 PM UTC

magicarp wrote: post #27

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

I'm sure there are ways you could improve upon this.

I'm sure. I would like it to be more of an open platform for Facebook data, and focus more on friends. Plus it should be local instead of trusting other with all your data.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#39

Post by Skywing » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:42 PM UTC

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

This happened to me when Yobongo was announced.

I had been working on basically the exact same concept for several months. Mine was named GeoHello. I was building mine as a web app, meant to be used by mobile devices. I felt that a native app would be better, but I didn't have any iOS experience at that point in time, so I went with web. I had the demo finished and even began trying to get people to try it out. In general, everybody thought it was neat. Then, a few days later, word of Yobongo started to show up on TechCrunch as a project that was being started by a team with somebody that was well known in the Valley. They were also building it as a native iOS app.

I was pretty depressed for a little while, but it actually played to my advantage because I got to see how Yobongo tackled many of the chicken and egg problems that a real time location based app faces. There were a few other apps that appeared shortly after Yobongo that were doing the same thing. I'm pretty sure that none of them are around anymore because that's a pretty difficult problem to overcome.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#40

Post by SCdF » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:44 PM UTC

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

I think I would be on the side of excited.

It would be nice to make a batrillion dollars I suppose, but I already have a day job and a growing list of books that I haven't read, and as much as I like coding in the case of my main idea I'm kicking around it's a means to an end, and I would be a happy chap if that end already existed.